Grange Garden Exchange News 5

Garden Exchange meeting in October 2011

Note the vase of sweet peas and the Oxalis regnellii atropurpurea – Purple Shamrock -which was given to me by John Chalmers when I went to photograph the rose garden at Falcon Bowling Club.

Alison Cunningham and I are now emerging from hibernation, ordering seeds and making plans for the coming year. My husband and I have relined our pond so will be restocking in Spring. I replanted the lilies but everything else is now composting.

Plans for 2012

It is very clear that visits to nearby open gardens including tours especially for us, are very popular. Please let us know if there are places you have always meant to visit, or that you can highly recommend.

Our ideas for the first few months are as follows:

February

February 17th A visit to Gosford House grounds near Longniddry to see the snowdrops and winter landscape. I will arrange a time and help to organise lifts for people who want to go. We will walk round the woods in sight of the house and see the landscaped ponds, the old boathouse, ice house and curling stones store. We can visit the farm shop and cafe too. I will send an e-mail with details nearer the time.

February 26th – Bridgend Allotments Potato Day. 11.00 to 3.00. Recommend going early if you want to buy potatoes, shallots or seeds. You can park in Cameron Toll shopping centre and walk down. You will get a chance to see the allotments which include the Royal Calley’s organic demonstration plot.

March

March 7th afternoon. We have invited David Catt from the Borders organic gardeners to come and help us with pruning. This will be a hands on chat and Q&A probably in my garden or in that of a friend of Alison’s . It would help to have an idea of numbers so let me know if you are likely to come. I will tell you the details nearer the time.

April

Arrange a visit to Dr Neil’s Garden in Duddingston. Also a good month to see daffs. Perhaps somewhere else in East Lothian?

After this we will be open to ideas. Would you like to go to see tulips in Bonaly in May and possible a visit to New Hopetoun garden centre. I will buy the Yellow Book and look for promising open gardens. However your ideas are also very welcome.

Musselburgh Horticultural Society

A few of us went last night to their meeting when Donald Rodger spoke about heritage trees. Wonderful pictures of venerable specimens all over Scotland. This reminds us how important it is to look after trees locally. Trees are totally unprotected unless they are in a conservation area – which ours are. So it is our responsibility to ensure that they are looked after if they are old and lovely or otherwise of interest.

The Musselburgh members made us very welcome and gave us their details. They have a website at http://musselburghhorticulture.wordpress.com/ .They have further talks planned and they hold a summer flower show which I think it would be good to visit on 25th August. You can see photos of last year’s flower show on the website. The next talk is on dahlias, which I am interested in, and it is on Monday 5th March 7.30 at The Hollies Day Centre which is at 83 High Street right at the Edinburgh end of the street.

Previous newsletters

These are now posted on the Grange Association website under the ‘gardens’ tab.